Are you all seated comfly-bold two-square on your botty?  Then I’ll begin….

H.  G.  Wells’ The Invisible Man was published in 1897 and the first film adaptation, directed by James Whale and starring Claude Rains (Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, etc.), was released on November 13 1933 and spawned so many spin-offs that it might well be considered the cornerstone of a genre.

It’s an intriguing notion – invisibility – and I have the feeling that many have, as I have had, moments when invisibility would have been more than welcome.  Fewer, however, have experienced true invisibility as I and my entrepreneurial upstairs neighbour and friend Paul ______ did one balmy night in 1969.

Tricky Dick Nixon was in office and becoming enamoured of the Great Silent Majority.  Squeaky-clean Pat Boone, “Duke” John Wayne, and the world’s Lord of Animation Walt Disney were hyping the music and performances of Up With People.  And there was Hair absolutely everywhere – In the news, on the airwaves, on vinyl, on stage, on our heads, and in the lexicon of garden-variety bigots.

On the night in question, The University of Texas’ Longhorns were in the ascendancy – #1 in the nation – and the tower was not only bathed in burnt orange light, as it always is following a gridiron victory, some interior lights were left on to form the number one for all to see.

More importantly, it was homecoming and burnt orange and white were everywhere.  Cadillacs with burnt orange bodies and white roofs including some with longhorn hood ornaments, men in burnt orange and white three-piece suits or white pants and burnt orange shirts sporting white Stetson hats, women in burnt orange skirts and white blouses and vice versa, burnt orange and white bunting all the f*** over the place, white people with burnt orange face paint, and, I swear to God, hundreds of gallons of burnt orange blood coursing the veins and arteries of hot-blooded students, fans, alumni, and boosters.

And for reasons I’ll never know and probably didn’t then know, P____ and I, stoned out of our gourds on single-toke Vietnamese Black, decided we’d go to the game.

Now, picture this.  I’m 6’1”, had hair long enough to tie in a pigtail under each ear, and was wearing my most gaudy flower print western snap button shirt, boot-cut Levis, stovepipe Justin boots with half-riding heels, and a black felt flat-brimmed hat a la Lee Van Cleef.   P___ on the other hand, who was at least a full head shorter than I.  was dressed as he always was, in black shirt and black Levis.

It was maybe forty-five minutes to a hour from kickoff when we arrived and, since the student entrance was at ground level, we had to make our way along the cinder track to get to the bleachers.  With the only open seats in the end bleachers, that meant we had to walk the entire length of the field and on the way cut through the gaggle of cheerleaders with battery-powered megaphones doing their hot stuff, the Showband of the South musicians with instruments in hand making their way to their seats, football team staff, reporters, field cameramen, and who knows who else.

You’d of thought we’d stand out in that two-tone mass, but we didn’t.
Walking along the track in front of the packed and motivated main bleachers with the Cheer Squad on an 6′ high platform, we were both literally and figuratively beneath notice.

We were invisible.

And we knew it.

And it didn’t last.

Stoned as we were, you can probably imagine that P____ and I were having a high old time watching the animated crowd in the main bleachers doing call and response cheers with the Cheer Squad or acting like horizontally-strung  marionettes doing perfect Mexican Waves, which didn’t spread linearly but in a fan shape rooted on the Squad’s raised platform.

P_____ and I were there for maybe twenty minutes when someone in the booth got on a public address microphone and called for silence and attention to a message.

It took maybe two minutes for the curious, puzzled crowd to quiet, but it wasn’t, in fact, some sort of message coming across.  It was a live patched telephone call from President Richard Nixon who first praised the Longhorns’ as first in the nation and then said to a standing ovation that they (the team) and the assembled supporters are “the REAL Americans.”

Oh, no.  No, no, no, no, no.It was Homecoming!  It was time to revel and shower praise on our undefeated Longhorns!  It was supposed to be a celebration of the ‘horns’ indomitability on the field!  There was supposed to be exhilarating madness in expectation of another win and unfettered jubilation over the record to date! It was supposed to be football in an Austin space where NOTHING gets between the crowd and the ‘horns.  If Jesus appeared on the field, a flag would be thrown for too many men and the opponents would get the penalty.

But then Nixon’s accolades fell not on the team, who were still in the locker room, but on those assembled and hopeful  witnesses to history in the making.

In that moment he had changed the subject and redirected interest – The focus was no longer on the virility of our young men vs. the mere boys who dared to challenge.
Right then and there the celebration of all things under the marvelous burnt orange and white heaven ended and the once smiling souls turned to deadpan scanning for who belonged and who didn’t.

The eyes of Texas were upon us and it was time to leave…